Sydney call centre employees paid following delay due to technical glitch with pay system

SYDNEY, N.S. — The director of a Cape Breton call centre said he’s confident that a recent delay in paying workers will not affect workplace morale.

Todd Riley, director of ServiCom’s Sydney operation, said the technical glitch that was to blame for the three- and, in some cases, four-day delay in getting employees’ pay into their bank accounts was “an unfortunate incident” that was beyond the control of the company.

“My heart definitely goes out to all the people who suffered until their pay came in — I can’t apologize enough,” said Riley, who held a town hall-style meeting with employees on Wednesday to clear up any misconceptions over the late pay issue.

“My main concern over the weekend was about getting our employees paid on time — I don’t think I slept over the weekend when it came to thinking about how people were going to have to sacrifice.”

Riley also said that ServiCom’s Cape Breton operation continues to do well and that he’s looking forward to increasing the staffing level from the present 700 or so employees to more than 1,000 workers in the near future.

“As far as the business goes, we are in very strong financial shape here at our Sydney location — we have a great staff and we have invested into a new dialing system, we have invested into a new workforce management team and we’re looking to grow with the clients we have,” he said.

“So, I just want to calm the seas out there for people who are worried about having a job — we don’t anticipate having any problems moving forward.”

According to Riley, the glitch that caused the pay delay happened during the transfer of funds from the business to Ceridian, its payroll service.

“We made our transfer from our Connecticut site and we wired it on time, but the transfer did not reach its final destination — we pushed it over on time and something in the middle basically kind of froze it so that it didn’t get to its destination on time,” he said.

“It was confirmed to us that they received it, but because it was late and given that they (Ceridian payroll service) have a deadline, they had to wait until the next day and that put us behind — when you are transferring about a million dollars it’s pretty substantial, it’s not like doing an e-transfer between friends.”

The delay in receiving pay became public after several ServiCom employees, who requested anonymity, reported the issue to the news media. Riley responded by saying employees are free to speak their mind on issues of concern and would never be reprimanded for doing so.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual at the call centre, located in the premises of the former Zellers and Target stores in the Sydney Shopping Centre, where it moved after being located on Kings Road since it set up shop in Cape Breton in 1999, when it was originally called Ron Weber and Associates.

The company also continues to search for new employees with recent ads indicating that ServiCom is looking for people to work on a number of its accounts, including Onstar, Sirius XM and AT&T.